Innovation in Sheffield Boosts Magazine Sortation process

08

June 2018

For a number of years, Menzies Distribution has been operating our Gift ReUse (GRU) service for one of our major magazine clients. This service provides a simplified process for retaining unsold copies of magazines for return to their Finisher (the company which applies additional items such as gifts and polybags to magazines after printing, but before they are delivered to us), allowing them to recycle the unsold gifts for other uses.

The popularity of this service has grown substantially, and last year we retained 2.2 million copies through this process. Our success was not without impact, however, as the Finisher struggled to sort the high volumes which were being returned.

Eager to help our customers and explore the growth potential of this process, a team led by Dave Searle set about finding a solution. With the help of everyone in our Sheffield depot, IT Development and Central Support delivered a brand new system for collecting and more importantly, sorting the various products prior to their despatch to the Finisher.

While the Sortation Centre is still in its infancy, the results are already causing a stir with our clients. Volumes are expected to increase to around 3 million copies this year from existing clients and there has already been a lot of interest from other clients yet to venture down this route.